Government could introduce single nutritional labelling system across whole country

14th May 2012 - Fine Cut

The government is keen to introduce a single nutritional labelling system for all food packaging across the UK.

Health secretary Andrew Lansley believes that trimming down the huge range of different nutritional labels used by food companies will make it easier for consumers to understand what is contained in food products.

According to dailymail.co.uk, Lansley favours a 'traffic-light' system, which highlights unhealthy levels of fat, sugar or calories in red and healthy amounts in green. He will launch a 12-week consultation to devise the best system tomorrow.

In an interview with bakeryinfo.co.uk, he said: "We want to arrive at a consistent format. At the moment, we have a lot of different approaches, but I recognise there are some really big commercial interests out there.

"What I want is for people to be able to buy the same shopping basket, but that basket to have less saturated fats, fewer sugars and less salt in it - so it is about people changing their behaviour."

Lansley added it might prove difficult to convince manufacturers to adapt the 'perfect' nutritional labelling system but that he would instead settle for a consistent one.

The Department of Health as a whole is keen to help Brits make healthier eating choices in order to improve the general health of the country. It recently claimed that cutting the average salt intake by just 1.6 grams a day could help to prevent at least 10,000 premature deaths every year.